You may notice a pattern here. After another demoralizing mud incident and more warnings of mud on the map, we made the choice to bail to pavement ASAP so we could make the next town of Abiquiu. Of course it turned out that we’d quit just after the worst of things the day before, and the road in the morning was in great condition. We wound through beautiful high meadows down to the intersection with Hwy 285. It had a wide shoulder most of the way and we blasted downhill making great time. We turned back towards the route near Ojo Caliente and had a mild climb up to El Rito, which is a delightfully weird artsy village outside Abiquiu. We were outrunning a slow storm the whole time, and we managed to win the race until we were almost all the way into town. The road into Abiquiu itself gave us our first proper desert feeling- we were really in New Mexico now. Megan’s family friend Carol lives in Santa Fe and had planned to meet us for dinner. She’d been watching our Garmin dot and met us on the road with hugs and kombucha. We had a lovely dinner at the Abiquiu Inn, where Carol gave us some local tips and helpfully informed us that the peanut butter mud was technically called ‘caliche’. This will save us several syllables as we continue to curse it’s name. After dinner we headed to our lodging at Goldie’s. She has a couple cabins on her property for cyclists along with a kitchen and outdoor shower, and it made the perfect place to stay- we got to sleep in beds!